IIT Kharagpur develops novel Industry 4.0 tech for advanced manufacturing sector

IIT Kharagpur has developed a novel Industry 4.0 technology for remotely controlled factory operations and real-time quality correction during industrial production in India’s advanced manufacturing sector, the Department of Science and Technology said on Friday. The present innovation upgraded the industrial process of friction stir welding to a multi-sensory system of Industry 4.0.

The innovative technology developed by Suriya K Pal, professor in-charge at the Centre of Excellence in Advanced Manufacturing Technology, IIT –Kharagpur, in association with TCS, will acquire real-time information about the welding process through multiple sensors and ,enable online control of weld quality by means of cloud-based communication with the friction stir welding machine. “Welding is at the heart of any industrial operations. If we can improve the weld quality in real-time during batch production we can reduce rejections in post-production sample checks,” Pal said. Explaining the new technology, he said, “Our multiple sensor process involves various signal processing and machine learning techniques to predict the ultimate tensile strength of the weld joint is fabricated.”

This technology is connected with a vast experimental knowledge base to conform to a standard system and prediction of the weld joint strength, he noted. “Any defect identified during the monitoring procedure is corrected in real-time by sending modified parameters to the machine thus ensuring standardised quality of the process,” he said. The concept of this technology can further be evolved for real-time control of other industrial processes and such work will be carried at the centre with other industrial partners soon, Pal added.

“It (the technology) has not only set the course for remotely controlled operations in the Indian industrial sector but has also enabled real-time quality check and correction during the production process.

“This will make it possible for industrial houses to achieve standardised quality goals throughout the production process and reduce rejection hence lowering the cost of production,” the DST said in a statement.